Affiliate software for Shopify is the most searched add-on for this popular e-commerce platform. You started your online store and made a few initial sales, but now you want to expand!
How do you do it?
By adding affiliate software to your Shopify store!
When money is tight, and you’re counting every dollar with your Shopify store, diving in and justifying a big investment in ads can be frightening.
That’s why many online retailers are searching for a more cost-effective, low-risk way to bring more prospective customers to their stores: affiliate marketing.
Your affiliates will do your marketing job in a successful affiliate marketing program. And the best part of it? You only pay your affiliates (who refer customers to your Shopify store) when they refer customers who have completed a purchase.
In this article, you’ll discover what affiliate marketing is and how an Affiliate Program can be a game-changer for your existing Shopify store and how to get started with affiliate marketing right away.
What is an affiliate program?
An affiliate program is a reward-based online advertising strategy in which affiliates advertise your goods and send potential customers to your e-shop.
This is a win-win situation.
You get traffic to your Shopify store with almost zero initial investment, and your affiliates get rewarded for every customer who purchases products through their link.
Who are the affiliates?
Affiliates are advocates of your brand and/or your Shopify store.
They advertise your goods to their audience through social media, websites, ads, or blog links. In exchange for their contributions, the affiliates are rewarded with a flat commission or a percentage of each sale they make.
Affiliates would usually (and ideally) endorse goods aligned with their specific niche or desires.
Let’s assume, for example, that you sell eco-friendly, biodegradable diapers. Your perfect affiliate will be an environmentally-conscious “mommy blogger.” You (the diaper seller) and your affiliate (the mommy blogger) will be approaching the same audience (environmentally-conscious new moms).
You must promote your affiliate program to attract affiliates with the same target audience. Your affiliates must market your products to their audience and draw potential customers to your Shopify store. The closer your audience is associated with your affiliate’s audience, the greater the performance will be for both of you.
Is affiliate marketing the best approach for you?
Although the lack of initial investment means that affiliate services are likely to pay off, some companies are better suited to affiliate marketing than others.
Businesses with limited profit margins may be less effective in marketing your affiliate program. The commission awarding may not be worthwhile if your profit margins are too low to warrant more reductions in profits.
Benefits of an affiliate marketing program
As mentioned, Shopify store owners profit from affiliate marketing because it is a low-risk marketing strategy; you only pay your affiliates for a successful sale.
Although it’s a huge benefit that you don’t need to spend a lot of money to get things going with your Shopify affiliate program, how else will your Shopify store benefit from an affiliate program?
Push sales effectively
Yes. Affiliate marketing software for Shopify allows you to push sales effectively.
Affiliate marketing is perfect because it’s low-risk but also considered high-priced. Low risk + high reward = double victory!
Affiliate marketing is responsible for up to 16% of eCommerce sales in the US, making it one of the top 4 eCommerce sales sources.
Affiliate marketing is so successful because it works!
Why is affiliate marketing successful at driving sales?
Almost 75% of shoppers visit up to 3 non-retail websites before buying. Buyers want to hear feedback from others, particularly those they trust until they’re sure they will make a purchase. That’s where the affiliates are coming in.
More loyalty to your brand
Affiliate software for Shopify helps with brand awareness and loyalty. Your affiliate partners usually already have established relationships with their readers/watches.
When affiliates advertise your products to their audience, their audience is much more likely to trust your brand. They trust the affiliate not to cheat them and lead them to a worthy purchase.
For instance, if a pizza company told you that their new pizza is “the best pizza you’ll ever taste,” would you believe it? What if your favorite food blogger told you the same thing? You’ll probably click on the blogger’s link and order that pizza. The blogger has built trust with you and confers that trust in the pizza brand.
Fear of “buying regret” is one of the biggest reasons people would opt not to purchase.
No one wants to waste their hard-earned money or think buying them was a mistake. Affiliate marketing makes overcoming buying anxiety easier and helps you convert more sales.
Increase your scope
Read also: White Label Affiliate Marketing Software – Why Is It Important?
Good affiliate software for Shopify would have an army of affiliate partners promoting the Shopify store worldwide.
Instead of spending a lot of time and money building up your online presence with a handful of people, affiliate marketing offers your brand potential access to the entire audience of each affiliate you partner with. Suddenly, your Shopify store is open to thousands of customers your brand would never have been able to score.
Your affiliates have invested time and resources in building up their markets, and you will reap the benefits of their reach.
How to get started with your affiliate program?
For a start: what are your company objectives?
The following is a list of company objectives that a good Shopify affiliate program could fairly accomplish:
- Increase brand recognition and reach;
- Increase conversions;
- Increase traffic to your Shopify store;
Identifying which of these objectives is most important to your company will help you set your Shopify affiliate program’s performance criteria.
What is the estimated scale of your affiliate program?
How many affiliates are you planning to accept into your affiliate program? Bear in mind that a greater number of affiliates will take more time and more resources to handle.
Don’t have a lot of time to invest in your affiliate program? You could try to get a few great affiliates that are closely associated with your niche, rather than many affiliates that could possibly turn to fewer sales per person. The projected size of your affiliate program will also affect the Shopify affiliate app you are using.
Some apps (especially free ones) restrict the number of affiliate partners that you can have. You will have to keep this in mind when deciding which affiliate app is right for your company.
What Options Do you Have (brand advocates/influencers)?
Do you have a list of brand ambassadors or influencers who may be interested in joining your affiliate program? If so, excellent! Get them to know specifically about joining your affiliate program.
If you don’t, you must advertise your affiliate program to your audience. You can reach out to your audience through social media, email, or Shopify website. Regular shoppers at your Shopify store can be great advocates for your brand.
Choosing the right applicants for your affiliate program is key to the success of your program.
How are you going to reward your affiliates?
Although most affiliates receive a fixed sum/percentage per sale, exclusive deals or free goods may be used as additional rewards.
While affiliate marketing can mutually benefit you and your affiliates, you will also need to persuade potential affiliates to join your affiliate program.
Setting up good incentives will make the affiliate program more attractive to prospective affiliates (especially if you are in a competitive niche).
Affiliate programs with generous incentives are more likely to attract well-known affiliates capable of directing consistent sales to your company. It also shows that your Shopify store is trustworthy and trusts future affiliates.
Bear in mind that you need to have a wide profit margin to guarantee a generous affiliate incentive.
A step-by-step guide to adding an affiliate program to your Shopify store.
Now, we’ll take you through the step-by-step phase of launching your Shopify affiliate program.
1. Choose an affiliate software and integrate it with Shopify
As you probably know, there are a lot of powerful Shopify affiliate apps that can help you improve your Shopify sales. Did you know that there are even Shopify applications to help you build an affiliate program?
Making up your mind about which affiliate app to choose for your Shopify store can be difficult. As you can guess, we recommend Scaleo affiliate marketing software.
Scaleo – Affiliate Software for Shopify
Scaleo is a popular affiliate software for many store owners. It can be quickly set up and incorporated into Shopify stores via API and offers an easy-to-use dashboard for affiliate management.
There are many key benefits for Scaleo, which you can check out in the features section. However, among the top benefits are:
- Instant access to the demo,
- The flexible pricing structure,
- Paying only for conversions (not traffic volume or clicks), and
- Super-extensive dashboards with dozens of data points and statistics.
Need help integrating Scaleo with your Shopify store? Don’t hesitate to contact us; our support team will gladly assist you.
2. Promoting your affiliate program
Once you’ve set up your Scaleo affiliate app (or any other), it’s time to employ affiliates to join your program.
Unfortunately, affiliates will not be racing out of the blue to join the program. You must advertise your affiliate program to your audience across different platforms and channels or reach out to brand supporters and influencers to find affiliates for your program.
Promote your affiliate program to your audience
You may wish to promote your affiliate program through:
- posts on your social media accounts,
- emails to your subscribers,
- or a link to the program overview page on your website.
Ensure that the ads demonstrate the benefits of your program to encourage future affiliates to join.
- What kind of commission is allocated to affiliates in your program?
- What benefits are available to affiliates that join your program?
People want to know if your affiliate program is worth their time and effort.
Your ads can also provide details about your affiliate program’s reputation or your affiliate website to attract potential affiliates.
Reaching out to specific affiliates.
You may also want to reach out to others with the same audience or interest to see if they are interested in joining your affiliate program. This is another productive way to extend the scope of your affiliate program.
Let’s assume, for example, that you’re selling trendy dog collars. You’d need to look through Instagram for trendy dog accounts to show off your product.
You may be in cold touch with people (or their furry friends) unfamiliar with your brand and products. In this case, you would need to share the specs and benefits of your affiliate program and the details of your brand to attract these potential affiliates to join your program.
3. Recruiting affiliates
Once affiliates join your affiliate program, they will need resources and promotional material for the program and your brand, as well as rules and restrictions.
- What are the rules of your affiliate program that affiliates need to follow when producing promotional content?
- What do you recommend your affiliates do to make your program a success?
- How do affiliates keep track of their referrals?
- What will affiliates be paid when the customer is effectively referred?
- What brand values do you want your affiliates to express in their posts?
You may also want to provide affiliates with pre-approved content to benefit their audiences. This could include graphics, pre-written social posts, or a list of hashtags you want to include in each message.
Be transparent with your affiliates about your objectives and provide them with the resources they need to succeed in your affiliate program.
4. Manage your affiliate program
Once you have taken your affiliates on board, you’ll want to keep track of their progress in recognizing the efficacy of your affiliate program. This is where affiliate management comes into play.
Find out which of your affiliates make the most of sales. You will want to look at the factors that make these affiliates popular so that you can target similar affiliates to join your program in the future.
In addition to affiliate revenue, you may also want to include the following criteria when reviewing the success of your program and its affiliates:
- Average order size of purchases attributable to affiliate referrals relative to normal sales
- Payouts for your affiliates
- Ratio of payment-to-sales
- Affiliate turnover rate
Conclusion – Let’s get started now!
You hear about affiliate marketing, how affiliate marketing can improve your store sales and traffic, and how you can get started by setting up an affiliate program in your store. Now is the time to use this entire experience and get started by adding affiliate software to your Shopify Store! Affiliate software Shopify integrations are easy to use if you use referral software like Scaleo.
Shopify affiliate marketing is becoming increasingly popular, and every now and then, a new affiliate marketing app for Shopify pops up on the market.
Scaleo is an award-winning, certified Shopify Partner, and our Shopify marketing experts are always here to help you along the way. Good luck!
Does it matter what Shopify theme you use?
No, you can add a Shopify affiliate program to any store you run, regardless of your theme.
Can I Setup a Deep Link with Shopify?
Typically, your Shopify store’s home page is the landing page for your affiliate program that your affiliates lead customers to. However, we also allow our affiliates to link to any page of your site, which might be a single product or category page, or any page of your website. This is referred to as deep linkage.
Can I do affiliate marketing on Shopify?
Yes, Scaleo offers this feature if you integrate your Shopify store with SaaS affiliate software. Alternatively, you can integrate any affiliate network with your store and sell affiliate products, this is, however, a far less popular option.
How to set up an affiliate program on Shopify?
If you are using Scaleo.io – that it’s extremely easy, beck out our Shopify tutorial.
1 – Create an Offer the regular way in Scaleo.
2 – Select that Offer, and go to Goals. Edit a Goal and scroll to the Tracking Method section.
3 – Select Tracking Method > IMG Pixel (Shopify doesn’t support the Postback method and doesn’t allow IFRAME pixel). Copy that code.
4 – In the Shopify store, go to Settings > Checkout and add the copied code to the Additional Scripts with the following changes:
replace {amount} with {{ subtotal_price | money_without_currency }}.
Optionally, you can add parameter &adv_order_id={{ order_number }} to receive Order ID.
Last Updated on May 24, 2023
